Scope and arrangement
The collection consists of two audio recordings including an interview with Spence and a radio program discussing Black women playwrights before the 1950s. They are arranged chronologically.
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- Creator
- Spence, Eulalie, 1894-1981
- Call number
- Sc MIRS Spence 1994-45
- Physical description
- 2 audio_recordings
- Language
- English
- Preferred Citation
- Eulalie Spence audio collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library
- Sponsor
- An anonymous donor funded preliminary processing for this collection. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported a research library-wide grant for the digitization, and funded the Schomburg for the description and production of the finding aid as part of The Next Century of Black Studies Project.
- Repository
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
- Access to materials
- Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.
Born in Nevis, West Indies, Eulalie Spence was a writer, teacher, director, actress, and playwright. The collection consists of two audio recordings including a short interview with Spence.
Biographical/historical information
Born in 1894 in Nevis, West Indies, Eulalie Spence was a writer, teacher, director, actress, and playwright. She and her family moved to New York City in 1902. Spence was among the pioneer playwrights during the Harlem Renaissance and wrote fourteen plays, five of which were published: Episode (1928); Fool's Errand (1927); Her (1927); The Hunch (1927); and Undertow (1927). She wrote only one three act play, The Whipping (1934), which was optioned by Paramount Studios, but never made into a film. Several of Spence's plays won awards and she is considered one of the most experienced women playwrights of the first half of the twentieth century.
Spence died in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1981.
Administrative information
Source of acquisition
Gift of Patricia C. Hart, March 1994.
Processing information
Collection inventoried by Nathan Evans. Collection processed and described by Ornella U. Baganizi, archivist; and Shola Lynch, curator. Finding aid published in 2024.
Separated material
See the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division for the Eulalie Spence papers, Sc MG 552.
See the Photographs and Prints Division for the photographs.
Related Material
Black female playwrights : an anthology of plays before 1950, Sc E 96-677.
Key terms
Names
Subjects
Using the collection
Location
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Third Floor